Jonathan Manthorpe: China’s new guard carry no new brooms

Jonathan Manthorpe, Vancouver Sun columnist11.15.2012

Zhang Gaoli (left), Liu Yunshan, Zhang Dejiang, Xi Jinping, Li Keqiang, Yu Zhengsheng and Wang Qishan greet the media at the Great Hall of the People on Thursday in Beijing. China’s ruling Communist Party revealed the new Politburo Standing Committee following its 18th congress.

The makeup of China’s new hub of power, the seven-member Politburo Standing Committee led by incoming Communist Party boss Xi Jinping, says a lot about the failure of the country’s administration during the last decade, but very little about where it will go from here.

Xi underlined the indictment of 10 years of lacklustre rule by pointedly failing to mention the departing Communist Party leader and China’s president, Hu Jintao, as he introduced to reporters his six colleagues on the standing committee at the end of the 18th Party Conference on Thursday.

Only two of them are proteges of President Hu. The other five, including Xi, have risen through the party ranks under the patronage of 81-year-old former leader Jiang Zemin.

Jiang came out of retirement to deploy his influence in favour of Xi and against Hu’s followers in the months of backroom bargaining before Thursday’s announcement of the new lineup.

The differences between the political philosophies of the Hu camp and Xi’s followers are of degree rather than substance. Expect no surprises.

One difference is that Xi seems more attracted to private enterprise than Hu, who has overseen in the past decade a massive resurgence of the economic might of state-owned industries and purposeful containment of private businesses.

And there is no reason from Xi’s record to imagine he disagrees with Hu’s statements that the maintenance of the one-party Communist state is essential for China’s stability and success.

Indeed, two advocates of serious structural political reform — the head of the party’s organization department Li Yuanchao, and the head of the party in Guangdong Province Wang Yang — who were widely expected to get seats on the standing committee, didn’t make the cut.

Instead of lauding his predecessor, Xi, in his speech to reporters after the conference, emphasized the problem of endemic corruption among party officials and the need to re-invigorate China’s faltering economy in order to meet the expectations of the country’s 1.3 billion people.

These problems have both risen to crisis levels during Hu’s tenure.

“Inside the party, there are many problems that need to be addressed, especially the problems among party members and officials of corruption and taking bribes, being out of touch with the people, undue emphasis on formalities and bureaucracy, and other issues,” said Xi.

A signal that Xi is serious about trying to tackle corruption — although his chances of success remain slim — is the appointment of one of the new standing committee members, Wang Qishan, to head the Central Commission for Disciplinary Inspection, the party’s internal inquisition.

Wang is a protege and philosophical disciple of former prime minister Zhu Rongji, perhaps China’s most important reformer since Deng Xiaoping and a man who waged a vigorous but lonely and ultimately futile battle against corruption during his tenure in office from 1998 to 2003.

Even with the best will in the world, Xi and Wang are unlikely to be able to topple the hugely wealthy families that now dominate the top echelons of the Communist Party.

Indeed, published reports that have not been denied say Xi’s family fortune is several hundred million dollars, though unlike the assets of other leading families, there is no suggestion this money was come by corruptly.

But corruption and the yawning disparity between rich and poor it has created are a major cause of the social unrest that plagues China.

The latest available government figures say there were about 180,000 “mass incidents” of unrest in 2010, an average of about 500 a day.

A riot in Shishou in Hubei province in 2009 saw 70,000 people confront the police in what government officials have called the most serious street violence since the Communists came to power in 1949.

To try to lessen the tensions caused by the gulf between grossly wealthy Communist Party aristocrats and the increasingly hopeless poor, the Congress handed Xi and his new team a target of doubling both the country’s gross domestic product and people’s average incomes by 2020.

Xi picked up this challenge as the second theme of his brief speech to reporters.

“People’s striving for a better life is the goal we are struggling for,” Xi said.

To that end he pledged to try to offer “better schooling, more stable jobs, more satisfying incomes, more reliable social security, higher levels of health care, more comfortable housing conditions, and a more beautiful environment,” so people can “look forward to their children growing up in better circumstances, finding better work and living in better conditions.”

Xi’s victory over Hu’s supporters appeared to be complete when it was announced later on Thursday that he will take over the chairmanship of the party’s Central Military Commission, the group overseeing the armed forces.

Jiang Zemin retained the chairmanship of the military commission for two years after Hu took over the party leadership in 2002, and there have been reports Hu wanted to repeat this precedent.

But it seems Hu has agreed, however reluctantly, to go off into full retirement.

The two Hu supporters on the new standing committee are Li Keqiang, who will succeed Wen Jiabao as prime minister, and Liu Yunshan, now the party propaganda chief who will add overseeing party operations to his duties.

The four supporters of Xi from Jiang Zemin’s camp are Vice Premier Zhang Dejiang, who becomes chairman of the rubber stamp parliament National People’s Congress; Shanghai party chief Yu Zhengsheng, who will be chairman of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference; Zhang Gaoli, the party chief in Tianjin who will become executive Vice Premier; and Wang Qishan, who becomes the party’s chief anti-corruption watchdog.

But Xi’s triumph and the free hand to govern it implies is less impressive than it appears at first glance.

Xi is 59 years old and Li Keqiang, the new prime Minister, is 57.

All the others are in their mid-60s and will have reached mandatory retirement age by the time the 19th Party Congress picks new leaders in five years time.

That new crop will be chosen from among the 25 members of the Politburo, and that body holds a majority of Hu’s proteges.

So Xi’s second five-year term, if he gets one, is likely to be dogged by greater friction at the top than he faces now.

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